Wednesday, August 29, 2012

What the new Closed Captioning rules REALLY mean

There is a great deal of misinformation going around about the new requirements for captioning online video in the U.S. based on the Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Here are a few points of clarification.

The CVAA requires programming that is first shown on television with captions, it must also be closed captioned online. There is no requirement to caption a program that is shown originally and only online.

The root question is whether there was a requirement to close-caption the programming in the first place. If the channel in question generates more than $3 million in annual revenue, captioning is required. If the channel does not make more than $3 million a year, then it is exempt from closed-captioning.

CVAA does not apply to newspaper and magazine online sites because the material is not first broadcast and then shoveled online.